OK, maybe not at all fantastic. But watching the Canucks shockingly hold their own at high altitude against the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday, it was hard not to be struck by the record playing time the two rookies, uh, recorded. Twenty minutes for Tryamkin. Twenty-four minutes for Stecher.

And it wasn’t just the playing time. It was the quality of the playing time. The guys they were trying to defend. How adventurous, and ultimately successful, it was.

How fun it was to watch them.

Sorry, what?

How fun it was to watch them.

And how many times this year have you thought that about the Canucks?

So maybe splitting 60 minutes a night between the two is a bit much, especially when you consider there’s really no one — not one living, active skater — in the NHL who spends 30 minutes per game on the ice.

But we can dream, right?

On with your Morning Skate.

The Home Team

Big thanks to Wyatt Arndt for serving up the fabulous video of Jack Skille embarking upon a madman rush plus physical finish Saturday in Denver. (Great Provies, folks, if you missed them on the weekend.)

Clearly, Skille is one of the more interesting Canucks. How many guys in an interview would bring up the movie National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation as a way to offer insight into his own life?

There’s also this non-Chevy-Chase-related candour:

You have this mindset as a player: Are you helping or hurting? If you’re out of the lineup and complaining about it and moping around the room and showing everybody that you’re pissed off, you’re hurting the team and the room.

Always nice to check in, by the way, on how the Canucks are faring in the race to the lottery. Yes, I’m aware that there are still four-and-a-half months left in the regular season.

Note No. 1: The two worst teams played Monday night, a 2-1 overtime barnburner won by the Islanders.

Note No. 2: Don’t look now, but, like clockwork, three of the bottom six teams are Canadian teams.

Man, remember when Cliff Ronning was nearing the end of his career in 2002-03 and played for the Wild when they beat the Canucks in the Western Conference semifinal?

Nah, me neither.

Poll Dancing With Poll

Y’all know that Paul “Poll” Chapman loves to drop all sorts of polls on you. Every time he delivers a Skate, like he did Monday. And let me just say, sometimes they’re skewed. They’re skewed by his editorial slant (as the Donald would say, “failing Paul Chapman”), because he writes about the Grey Cup but, really, you can read between the lines, and then he asks you this: Which are you more interested in, the Canucks or the Grey Cup?

Is this a fair question? The Grey Cup is a one-time thing, happens every 365 days. The Canucks are an all-the-time thing. But it appears you proved his point. I suppose.

Next up: Will Jake Virtanen be a Canuck in two years? Solid question. And a tough one. He could well be, if the Canucks believe in him. He could well not be, if the Canucks don’t believe in him. He could well not be, if the Canucks see his strengths and envision him as an asset as much as anything else — and you have to think most of the team isn’t more than an asset, right?

Is it one of those things where the kid goes or the coach goes? Or is the kid just going? Or is the kid coming back here and will be here long into the future?

Finally, Chappy shows his sense of humour. Who, he wonders, would you like to see win the MLS Cup?

Nice one, Whitecaps fans! TFC and Montreal play the second leg of their Eastern Conference final on Wednesday (TSN, 4 p.m.). Maybe that meteor will just end things early and hit BMO Field.

Ken Linseman (left, with a shockingly aging Ray Bourque and Steve Heinze) is the only guy who could keep up with, and bother, Young Star.

The Other Home Team

As some of you know, I play in the 32,793rd division of a beer league in Burnaby.

Because it’s the 32,793rd division, the players in said division tend to be guys like me, who didn’t play much hockey growing up, certainly not at any serious competitive level. We’re there to have fun, to hopefully age gracefully and fall over as little as possible. (Occasionally I fall over the boards. This is seriously uncomfortable.)

On Wednesday night, we’ll play a team that beat us quite handily a few weeks ago. Before that game, some key advanced scouting told us that there was one guy we particularly needed to watch, who had a very familiar last name — the same last name as a former NHLer who had some very good years, including with the Canucks.

We didn’t think anything of it. In the 32,793rd division, you get these guys whose last names are “Gretzky” and “Messier” and “Jagr,” which is weird because ostensibly you need to present a driver’s licence when you’re playing, but maybe there are just way more Gretzkys out there than I ever considered.

Well, the kid came to play. Took him all of one shift to do an end-to-end dash and show some mad skills that suggested, quite quickly, that he was probably playing down somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 divisions. These people tend to stand out, because they can a) skate, and b) do other things needed to play hockey.

By the third period, Young Star had put up at least five points. He didn’t care that his team was leading by six goals. And he certainly didn’t like the fact that the one guy on my team who could keep up with him was actually being a bit of a pain in the ass. A hint of Kenny Linseman with a dash of Esa Tikkanen.

With about eight seconds to go in a nine-goal game, Young Star stole the puck in his own end and made one last wild sprint. Because, you know, you have to make it a 10-goal game if you can. Well, the clock ran out. And we jeered Young Star, who’d put up all those points and then taunted us from his bench, talking about us being grandpas and using walkers on the ice.

And then he skated up to Linseman Tikkanen.

Young Star: “Your number. That’s a good number. You know who used to wear that?”

Linseman Tikkanen: “Ah, a lot of players?”

Young Star: “My dad.”

Linseman Tikkanen: “I don’t care.”

Young Star: “You’re giving it a bad name. You should check out the Canucks (all-time roster).”

Great exchange. Though Linseman Tikkanen says his favourite Young Star line was this one: “How does it feel to be 30 and single?”

Linseman Tikkanen is 39. Ha! Joke’s on you, Young Star!

What Lovely Large Men

Somewhat flying under the radar as the final seconds ticked off the clock during regulation at the Grey Cup was what happened when the Ottawa RedBlacks’ Henry Burris was taking a knee to send the game to overtime.

Did you notice it? The larger than life men exchanging pleasantries?

It’s funny. In sports media, we often think that the offensive linemen, as a group, are some of the smartest people in pro sport. Here, if you match up the language with the head bobs, it appears that the guy whose mother most needs to wash his mouth out with soap is Stampeders’ defensive lineman Micah Johnson.

Meanwhile, this may be my favourite photo from the Grey Cup. Not everyone in a tarped-up locker room is going insane all the time. Like Ottawa’s Travon Van and Trevor Harris, just calmly texting and suffocating at the same time:

While Harris, the RedBlacks’ backup QB, was thoughtfully texting friends and family, Burris was, quite possibly, committing several sins all at once:

Drop the alcohol. Add adoring 10-year-old son Armand:

Here, the RedBlacks’ Tanner Doll, eyes wide open, shows off his incredible locks in his delirium:

And here, maybe a half-hour later, Tanner Doll is hanging out with kicker Chris Milo, perhaps in no shape to play football, hair slightly less impressive, a different sort of delirium:

And, last but not least, an unhappy losing quarterback:

The truth is we lost. We're no different than the 9th place team when you don't bring home the cup. Damn.

I Leave You With This

Godley & Creme had a couple of mild hits in the UK, but just one that seemed to stick on this side of the Atlantic: Cry.

It was OK. Fine. Not particularly memorable.

Until the Philosopher Kings did their cover version. Superb. And now the surprising news that the Toronto band is set to tour to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their album Famous, Rich & Beautiful. Next March 6 at the Commodore, ending a 10-gig cross-Canada tour.

Here’s their Cry:

Tickets are on sale Friday.

Have a great Tuesday, everyone. Here’s looking forward to 60 minutes of Stechamkin tonight against the Wild.

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